


A Price

by Venstar



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-22 03:16:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8270531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venstar/pseuds/Venstar
Summary: Death came to me on sock footed feet, stepping softly and silently across the hall floor, for it seems that Death didn’t care to wear shoes.For the MI6-cafe challenge for October.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tsuyu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsuyu/gifts).



> for the MI6 cafe challenge for October. O Death as the prompt.

He was sitting in the kitchen when I came home… except, I’d watched them bury him just five weeks prior.

“Hello?”

“Hello?”  He repeated me, his smile stiff across his face.  Was it pain or something else?  Is it possible to kill someone a second time?  I’m considering it. 

“Hello?” he repeated again, still seated in the kitchen and I shivered, his voice was his yet not, I’d heard it so often across the comms, I would recognize it anywhere.  His immaculate uniform, that he had been buried in, whose medals and ribbons I had personally helped dig out of his storage unit were dirty and scuffed.  I had never seen him in such disrepair except following a very rough mission.  He smiled at me again, the charming bastard.  “I am Death.  We are to meet.”

I took a step back, to run, to escape.  I reached for my mobile, attempting to unlock it one handed with frozen fingers to call Tanner…when he stood up.  I panicked.  If rabbits were considered to be fearful creatures, they had nothing on me right now.  Filthy, stuttering curse words fell out of my mouth - not something I relied on in real life, but this couldn’t be real life- as I cursed myself for the pride I had taken in developing my own high tech, complicated security system.  My door had locked behind me, closing me in my own home.

“We are to meet.”  Death came to me on sock footed feet, stepping softly and silently across the hall floor, for it seems that Death didn’t care to wear shoes.  

I could hear the clinking of the medals that should still be 6 feet under, until suddenly the medals were at my back.  I wondered desperately if that was all he - whatever that was lurking in the body of 007 could do - talk in repetitive sentences, this is some odd take of a joke, I’ll murder whoever did this.  “Is this the start of the Zombie apocalypse, because if it is, I’m not ready.  And if this is a joke, someone is dying.”  I mumbled into the door as I pressed into it, hoping for escape.  

“I can make that happen, Q.”

My name, he said my name.  He…it knows who I am.  “Go away.”  Even to my own ears I sounded petulant.

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

I was scared.  I was angry and I just wanted to stuff food in my face and then go to sleep for a century and forget the last 6 weeks.  “Yes you can.  Go away.”  But it wouldn’t shut up.  In death as in life, that bloody bastard had to have the last words.  Not this time you son of a dead…bitch.

“I made a promise.”

I refused to face him, maybe if I ignored him, he’d get the idea to leave.“To who?  For what?  Go away.”

“To him, for you.”

That’s it, that’s the last straw.  I dealt with double-oh’s on a daily basis and not once had I let one treat me like this.  “Get the fuck out of my house, now.”  I finally got my hands and brain working at once to unlock my door, but once a double-oh, always a double-oh, death be damned.  He yanked my phone out of my hand before my fingers could hit the emergency call button and grabbed me by the back of my jacket and pulled me back into the room.  That’s when I began to fight in earnest.  Nothing worked.  Not my taser, not my poison ring and when i finally stabbed him with my exploding pen and stood back to watch, that bastard just stared at it, cool as a cucumber, before he removed it from his torso, there was no blood.  He disarmed it and gave a small hmmm as he ran his fingers over the small device.  

“An exploding pen,” he said softly, with a little bit of wonder kicking up the end of his voice.  In that voice, that voice I had heard hundreds of times asking for the stupid thing.  The stupid thing that after losing one of the best double-ohs, I had made afterwards.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t breathe and he seemed to know that.  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.  I didn’t know!  I mean I knew. I always knew!”  I’m a sniveling mess now and he’s not saving me from this horrible emotion, like I couldn’t save him.  “I knew, I know all double-oh’s have a short lifespan, it’s a risk.  It is.  I know that.  The least I could have done was made that for you, before…”  I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t finish.  I was just a mess of hiccoughing, snotty tears.  “I’m sorry, I just.  Need a moment.”  From somewhere on his person, he pulled a handkerchief out of his pockets and handed it to me.  The material was soft and fine beneath my hands, of course that infuriating man would have something so fine in his possession.  I couldn’t bear to get it dirty with whatever was leaking from my face, so I just held it in front of me, staring at it.  In the end, I used my sleeve.  I looked up to catch an oddly familiar look of amusement cross his face.  “What are you here for?”

“I made a promise.  To him, for you.  A trade.”

I’m confused.  “You’re here, for me.  I die now?”  My voice warbled at the end.  I didn’t expect to die so soon either.  “Well, I’ve heard there are worse ways to go.”  A small quirk of the lips was his only show of amusement.  “I’m sorry, that was tacky.”

“He didn’t think the two of you had much time together…”

I held up my hand to interrupt him, “What are you getting at?  We didn’t have ANY time together.”

“He regretted.”

“Regret is unprofessional.” I bit out from reflex.  “He would know that, so you should know…that too.”

“Regret is a human emotion Q, and he was very human.”

“So what’s the trade?”

Death watched me, oh so carefully.  Where 007’s blue eyes had alternated between being coldly calculating or filled with a sahara like heat, Death’s were blank and unemotive.  He just considered as I watched him.  “One week of your time, with him.”

I refrained from raising my eyes heavenward.  The nerve that 007 had in life apparently extended into Death.  Unless Death was a cheeky bastard as well.  “One whole week?” I asked with some slight tone of sarcasm.  What a gift.  “What’s the catch.”  Mum had read enough fairy stories as a child, everything has a price.

Death smiled and I was lost.  “One week of your time with him and it will be him…”

“I sense a but coming.  A big but.”

“But, I will be along for the ride.  To experience what he experiences.  Feel what he feels.  See what he sees.  That is the price and the cost of his companionship for a week.  Tell anyone about our arrangement, introduce us as anything else and I will revoke the agreement and you will be left with a cold corpse wherever I see fit to leave him and you will have to suffer the consequences.”

I swallowed.  It was quite a price.  


End file.
